Hamm: It's great. It's nice just to have a job, first of
all. That's nice. But I've been a baseball fan my whole life. I've had friends
that played at every level. My best friend's dad growing up played professional
baseball with the Cardinals, Brewers and Braves, Ted Simmons. So, I've loved
baseball my whole life.
Hamm: "My dad used to take me to the old Busch
Stadium, which was this ugly concrete doughnut. I hated the Mets with a passion
that kills. Still do. My best friend growing up was a kid named John Simmons
that I met in seventh grade. His dad just happened to be Ted Simmons [the starting
catcher on the 1982 Brewers and a longtime Cardinal before that]. My best
baseball memory is my best friend's baseball disaster. [I remember the 1985
NLCS] when Jack Clark and Ozzie Smith both ruined Tom Niedenfuer, it was
fantastic."
Interestingly enough, the movie gave Hamm the opportunity to play someone close to the father of a boy who he "happened to go to school with ... [and] who became my best friend."
"... again, very randomly this was not a mission on my part to get to the cool guy," Hamm said. "Ted and Marianne [Simmons, Ted's wife] and Matt and John their sons, their whole family was and remains very close to me and very much part of my life, and so baseball was a big part of my life for a long time and from a very early age."
http://www.latinpost.com/articles/20590/20140902/mad-men-season-7-star-jon-hamm
Emmy winning
Using first names only, Hamm then cited some of the “families who have chosen for some reason to take me in and be nice to me.”Two he mentioned were Ted Simmons, the Cardinals great, and his wife, Maryanne.......He also named the parents of actress Sarah Clarke....
I have a couple of T-shirts I stole from my friend John Simmons in the eighth grade. They belonged to his dad, who was a professional baseball player. I still wear them and they’re still super-awesome.
What fueled your passion as a die-hard Cardinals fan?
Hamm: I grew up in the ’70s, sort of lean years for Cardinals fans. My dad took me to a lot of games, and I just loved the experience of going to the ballpark. You kind of cast the die and start rooting. Then in 1982, we went to the World Series. I remember thinking as an 11-year-old boy that this is the greatest thing that I will see in my life. Growing up, one of my best friends was John Simmons, whose father was Ted Simmons, who played for the Cardinals for many years. Then, before the 1981 season, he was traded to the Brewers, who were in the American League then. And, of course, we played the Brewers in the 1982 Series. I have this incredible memory of this wonderful thing happening to me. But meanwhile, my best friend, whose father was playing for the other team, remembers it as one of the worst things in his life. We constantly go back and forth talking about whose experience was more valid in that particular time, but we’re still friends, so that’s really nice.
jessicaradloff.com/wp-content/.../08/Jon-Hamm-May-2013-Cardinals-Interview
You had difficult challenges in your younger years, but you stayed on top of everything. What sustained you?
I had amazing teachers in my life who were very important to me. And I was not too young and stupid to think that I was smarter than them. I lost my parents when I was young. I had very good friends whose parents rallied round and very much helped to raise me in the whole sense of “It takes a village” kind of scenario.
My best friend’s parents became my de facto parents during those years, and I still look at them that way. I’m very close with the friends I grew up with and their families. I’m not going to say that I didn’t have my share of stumbles and poor decisions along the way. That’s part of growing up. You need to learn from those.
Hamm became the kid who was always around other people's houses—popping up at the dinner table, crashing in the basement: "I knew where all the spare keys were kept." In particular, three of his pals' mothers took it upon themselves to look out for him. Their names, because such women should be acknowledged, are Maryanne Simmons, Susie Wilson, and Carolyn Clarke.
http://www.gq.com/story/jon-hamm-mad-men
In particular, three of his pals' mothers took it upon themselves to look out for him. Their names, because such women should be acknowledged, are Maryanne Simmons, Susie Wilson, and Carolyn Clarke.
"We all felt a sense of responsibility to help mother him," says Simmons, whose son befriended Hamm in the seventh grade. She and the others remember Dan Hamm as supportive—a backslapping, quietly joking presence at football games and school plays—but diminished, grateful to the women Hamm calls his "three moms" but also a little sheepish about it. "You got the feeling that he had once been Dan with a capital D, but not anymore," Simmons says.
http://www.gq.com/story/jon-hamm-mad-men
......
"Jon (Hamm) was a significant part of our lives,'' Ted Simmons tells USA TODAY Sports. "When you're at that age, and you don't have a guidepost that's fixed like Mom and Dad, we all worried about him.
"Jon was a brilliant kid. It wasn't just being insightful, he was really smart, maxing out on the SATs and that kind of stuff. And he was drop-dead handsome from the seventh grade. He could have had any girl he wanted by the time he was in seventh grade. He could have had had half the teachers too. He was always the center of attention.
"So you worried he would do something to wreck his life. We used to always tell them, whatever you do, please call us, so at least we can go to sleep.''
Hamm, a bartender and waiter trying to make ends meet, found a few part-time acting gigs until 2007 when he was cast for Mad Men. A Hollywood legend was born.
"I stopped worrying about him right then,'' Simmons says.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2014/08/18/jon-hamm-st-louis-cardinals-first-pitch-ted
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